A typical aircraft towing vehicle is disclosed in Patent DE 4,446,048 A1, and with aircraft towing vehicles of this type, the locking to the nose landing gear of an airplane to be towed takes place in such a manner, whereby the aircraft towing vehicle with support elements in a pivoted release position approaches the nose landing gear so that the nose wheels are located in the U-section of the chassis. Subsequently, the support elements are rotated into an operating position in which they reach behind the nose wheels and the nose wheels are pulled by means of the support elements on a lifting platform, are lifted and supported by the lifting platform and locked onto same.
With the aircraft towing vehicle known from Patent DE 4,446,048 A1 each support element is guided by the guiding rail associated with it, by means of an anterior and a posterior roller, and each guiding track is angled outward so that with the approach of the support element to the posterior end of the guiding rail, a rotational movement of the support element into a release position is forced. This means an advantageous simplification as compared to other known aircraft towing vehicles, for example those described in Patent DE 3,732,664 A1 or U.S. Pat. No. 4,375,244, in which cases it is necessary for each supply element with a linear drive moving longitudinally to employ an additional rotational drive for the locking and release rotational movement of the support element.
The design known from Patent DE 4,446,048 A1 with outwardly angled guiding rails, however, also has disadvantages. One disadvantage lies in the fact that the angled end sections of the guiding rails which surround the two flanks of the chassis at the rear, extend the chassis in an undesirable manner. Hereby it is to be considered that instead of the rectangular strong angling as seen in a simplified drawing in Patent DE 4,446,048 A1, in practical cases an angling with a much greater radius is needed in order to be able to control a more even rotational process of the support elements. Besides that, the manufacture of such angled guiding rails is expensive, and since they must be heavy and massive parts, and because of the angled part of each guiding rail, the weight of the vehicle is increased to an undesirable degree.